


a lifetime of coincidences

by scaredybear



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Drug Use, F/F, alcohol use, all in chapter five
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-08-07 05:29:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7702504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scaredybear/pseuds/scaredybear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a lifetime of coincidences, a habitual meeting. </p><p>A collection of wardmarsh one-shots; small ficlets that aren't connected beyond the central pairing. Essentially, this is a smorgasbord of ideas/scenes that I had wanted to write out for various reasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to suggest ideas of your own. Enjoy!

Dana wakes to a voice whispering her name from the doorway of the guest room, low, troubled. She’s too groggy and half-asleep to really register anything beyond immediate concern, and the way someone shifts in the doorway, unsure.

It really could only be one person.

“Kate?” Dana squints in the darkness, words thick with sleep. She can barely make out the shape of her at the mouth of the room. “What’s wrong?”

Kate doesn’t say anything, not at first; hesitates as she decides between stepping in or not, like she regrets waking Dana up in the first place. By now, Dana has shifted so she’s leaning on her elbow, still squinting past the shadows. Alarm has broken through whatever grogginess remained. For what it’s worth, this is unlike her. Worryingly so.

“I—“ But she stops herself, voice breaking off at the end. The sound makes Dana’s heart drop.

“Bad dream?” Dana offers in a soft mumble. There’s more to it, she knows, but it’s too late to pry and Kate isn’t one for opening up. Neither of them are, really. She gets it.

“Sort of.” Kate fidgets, hand poised on the door knob. Ready to flee. The stoop of her shoulders suggest she’s been arguing with herself for a while about this very thing: crawling into bed with someone else, seeking comfort from things she couldn’t talk about. Didn’t want to talk about. (Though it’s not exactly the first time they’ve held each other.)

Dana moves over on the futon, lifts up the fleece throw in a silent invitation. She’s not sure what else she could do besides that. (And she’s failed Kate so many times before this. Failed her as a friend, when she needed her a month and some change ago, so Dana’s a little shaken and more than a little afraid at the prospect of fucking up again.)

The situation is oddly familiar, making her recall all the times she’s had to tuck her mom in, half-drunk and heartbroken after a date gone wrong.

Wordlessly, Kate crosses over to her and slips in, impossibly cold and small. The futon isn’t meant for two people, so Kate presses herself close, forcing Dana’s back against the wall. Her hands are trembling; Dana bundles them up in her own, presses a kiss to Kate’s head.

“It’s okay.” She says. The words are messy and run together, tumbling against the crown of her head. Kate’s hair tickles her lips when she speaks, sticks to them, too.

“I don’t want to be alone right now.” Kate whispers the words against Dana’s collarbones, and she’s not sure if she was supposed to hear them. Doesn’t matter. Dana just let’s go of Kate’s hands and wraps her arms around the other girl’s torso. They don’t need to talk, not right now.


	2. ii

sunlight filtered through the canopy, painting their skin in a marveling display of light and shadow. every breeze shifted the dappled reflection, sea salt wafting in the air. 

Dana’s not sure how close they are to the lighthouse, but she knows the two of them started wandering and didn’t quite stop. That is, until Dana complained of a charlie horse and promptly sat down on the nearest available surface (a tree stump). Kate stood for a bit before conceding the fact she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, then hunkered down beside her with a tiny huff.

“we’ll be late for class.” Kate notes mildly. legs stretched in front of her, she leans back on her palms. her bun is loose and sloppy, stray hairs haloing her face. she peeks over at her from under a fringe of dark blonde bangs, faint smile playing on her lips. Dana likes the way she looks in a pair of shorts; Kate’s legs are long, lean. Runner’s legs. But Kate catches the way her gaze lingers, shifts herself so they’re under her and Dana tears her eyes away, ashamed.

what was she doing?

“we can always catch the bus.” she says stiffly, staring rather intently at the dirt path slashing its way through the trail.

“if we run.” Kate says. her voice is distant, somewhere else, though. and Dana wonders what’s going through her head, but find she fears the answer.


	3. iii

The tiny apartment is quiet. More quiet than Dana is used to.

Early morning sunlight streams through the window that faces the balcony, filling the space with soft golden colour. From somewhere in the distance, birds chirp and squabble. A laughably idyllic image if Dana ever saw one, and she finds herself wishing Kate were there to share the moment with. She had left for work two hours ago, in the pre-dawn gloom. (She has a way of getting up without disturbing Dana; a bittersweet thing.)

Though they've only been living together for a handful of months, Dana had grown used to the way Kate moved around the apartment—always the first to rise, always so mindful of the noise she was making.

Stifling a yawn, she wanders into the kitchen, heading straight for the coffee pot. Food can wait until she gets her fix of caffeine. Dana moves to open the cupboard above when something catches her eye.

And there, sitting in front of the coffee pot, is a cardboard box adorned with a bright purple bow.

 _Wake up & smell the chemistry!_ The box yells cheerfully. Dana picks it up and turns it over in her hands, finds the post-it note stuck to the top. She plucks it off, mouth twisting in a smile as she reads it:

_I found this in a tea shop in Portland and it made me think of you! <3_

Kate's trip to Portland with Max was a while ago, which means she's been keeping the gift a secret. A small chuckle escapes her then because it's just _so Kate_ to do this. The gesture is incredibly heartwarming.

Her smile becomes something of a goofy grin when she manages to wrestle the mug out. On the glass surface a myriad of formulae gazes up at her. It just might be the nerdiest thing she owns now, and she loves it. She loves Kate for thinking of her, even when she doesn’t need to.

There’s something in the little things that speak volumes.


	4. iv

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

It's just them now, on the couch. Everybody else had left for a midnight snack run, a little high and a little drunk, and maybe one of them should have left to go pay mother hen. Yet here they are, sitting close and talking in whispers. 

Kate's hand rests on Dana's knee, a pleasant anchor she finds herself liking too much. (Every twitch of her fingers sends an eletric shock racing up Dana's spine.) There's colour to Kate's face despite her being sober, and Dana concedes that it must be the room, it must be hot in there because she finds herself feeling a little warm, too.

Kate giggles at some joke she's made, the noise sugary sweet; mumbles something Dana doesn't quite catch. No, she's too busy watching the way her mouth moves. A couple years out of Blackwell, and she still wears the same shade of red lipstick. A couple years out of Blackwell, and Dana still finds the colour strangely beguiling.

Suddenly, Kate stops talking and notices the way her eyes linger on her lips. Silence begins to echo in the room, uncomfortable and thunderous. Much like the way her heart beats against her chest.

Dana closes the distance and catches her mouth, kisses her gently.

Kate kisses back— _she kisses her back!_ —teeth grazing her bottom lip. A trembling hand reaches up and cups Dana's cheek, the other hand splayed on her knee snaking up to her waist. She's not sure what to do with her own hands. She places them on the small of Kate's back, uncertain and apprehensive.

If she's being honest, kissing her is like she's found the answer to a question she's been working on for years. Making out with her boyfriend is something else entirely: all perfunctory lip-to-lip contact, and the occasional swipe of a sloppy tongue as she yields to what he wants, for she is nothing if not a dutiful girlfriend. Only Kate's lips are soft and inviting, demanding nothing of her, nothing at all.

They should stop (they really, really should), but Dana can’t bring herself to break away. Kate whimpers into their kiss, a shiver rippling down Dana’s spine in response and, oh.

_Oh._

The sound has made her deliciously light headed.

The way Kate moves beneath her hands (inching closer, tight and coiled), how her mouth feels against hers (too good, too good), makes her thoughts muddled. Another nip on her bottom lip and Dana takes the hint, parts her mouth for Kate. 

The fact that kissing her boyfriend has never felt like this is both alarming and saddening.

Then the door slams open, Kate flying back to the other end of the loveseat. Carefree conversation fills the room, the laughter coming from Max somewhat jarring. Now there’s a gulf between them on that impossibly small couch, one Dana can’t fathom crossing. Kate won’t stop looking at her with wide, scared eyes.

Something inside of her shatters.


	5. v

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to be safe, there is casual drinking and drug use.

At what might have been one, or four in the morning, Dana is stumbling—falling, really—into her room. The heels clutched in her hand clatter noisily as she elbows the door shut (also forgetting to lock it). Beneath her feet, the floor heaves and roils like waves in the ocean. Dana all but collapses on her bed, gracelessly, limbs dead weights. Frankly, it’s a bit of a miracle she made it back to her room at all, and not ass-up on the sidewalk leading to the Prescott dormitories. (Juliet wandered back to the boys’ dorms, leaning on Zachary with Trevor lumbering close behind. Presumably, she intended to spend the night in Zachary’s room.)

Sitting on her pink comforter does little to stop the way the world spins, or how it collides in a riot of shadow in moonlight. The evening unraveled into a constellation of things she couldn’t remember, of words and games that were better left in the peripheral of her memory. There was just something in the way Trevor touched her, held her, that made her want to scour her body clean. Even now, far removed from him and his hands, Dana’s skin still crawled with an invisible dirtiness. One that burrowed bone deep. Drinking it away didn’t help, and neither did the drugs. It might have made it worse, but she’s having a difficult time telling.

The last remaining shred of lucidity tells her it was more than just pot in that joint passed between the four of them. At some point during the night, Trevor presented her, Juliet and Zachary with the small, pinched thing and talked them into taking a hit.

It went downhill from there. The happy, light buzz that filled her body soon replaced itself with a jittery, anxious guilt that nibbled at her self-control.

With clumsy fingers, she wrestles her phone from the pocket of her jeans. Texting while shitfaced and high probably wasn't the best choice Dana made that night. Though, if anything, she made all her _best_ mistakes drunk. Take Logan, for example. 

The Friday evening has been nothing but one colossal fuck-up after the other, so what’s adding one more to her growing list of mistakes? She brings up Kate’s contact information on her phone, an old photo from the start of the year smiling back at her. From before Kate’s suicide attempt. From before Dana shat all over their tenuous friendship. She didn’t even visit her when she was in the hospital. Now, it’s all awkward glances in the hallways and pretending they weren’t once familiar.

 _I’m sorry im so sory I wasn’t there for yuo when you needed me most im sorry I dint come visit you,, plese forgive me_  
Dana didn’t read the message over before mashing send with her thumb, head swirling with a haze that was quickly becoming unpleasant. Nausea and guilt make for a terrible cocktail. 

Kate replied far quicker than Dana expected: _I heard you coming in. You’re drunk, go to bed. We’ll see about talking tomorrow._ She reads it a couple of times, words blurring on the screen.

“Fuck,” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, phone slipping, falling to the floor. “fuck.” Because the reply admittedly wasn’t what she hoped for—what was she expecting?—and she’s more than convinced repairing their friendship is a lost cause. 

The fact that Kate said they’d talk tomorrow is all she has to hold on to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I overwrote this but welp. Here we are, folks. This was, at some point, a loose prequel to 'thinking too much' but it didn't really jive with it tone-wise and so it never went beyond this.


	6. vi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> trying to get better with showing vs telling.

The harsh glare of the television casts the living room in various shades of blue and grey and white, shadows stretching to the ceiling. On the screen, Sandra Bullock shimmies into a tight dress, though Kate lost the thread of the plot an hour ago; watching it but not really paying attention, finds she can't conjure the energy to give a fuck one way or another. Besides, the movie was Dana's idea, and she fell asleep twenty minutes in. The steady rise and fall of her chest is indication of this, every breath bobs Kate's head. 

("Come on, it'll be fun!" Dana gushes, and Kate almost believes her. Despite the way purple smudges line her eyes, or the way her shoulders sag, she's bent on the suggestion. "When was the last time we watched a movie together?"

Months, she wants to say. "I don't know." She says. Dana smiles, leans over and kisses Kate on the forehead.

"Get comfy. I'll grab something."

I don't deserve you, she wants to say. "Okay." She says.)

Awkward sleeping positions have never bothered Dana, and lately, she's mastered the art of falling asleep just about anywhere. Long work hours will do that, Kate guesses.

Everything about this moment should be comfortingly mundane. Yet a dull ache fills her, like she's been cracked open and all of who she was seeped out and onto the floor. Now she lays on top of Dana, hollow, an empty shell.

Burying her face in Dana's collarbone does little to stop the way her chest hurts. Reaching for her hand causes Dana to shift, mumble something in a dream-drenched voice as her hand rises up, and tangles in the mess of Kate's hair. She sighs, sleepy and content.

On the screen, Sandra Bullock stands triumphant, though the image begins to blur.


	7. vii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "i've been flirting with you for 84 years thanks for finally noticing"

"One more chapter." Kate promises, flicking her attention from the book in her lap, to Dana and where she roots through the dresser for a pair of shorts. Kate doesn't pay any mind to the way Dana bends over, rises the book up on her knees to block her out of view.

"You said that an hour ago." No grousing, just calm statement of fact. Besides, it hasn't been that long, has it? Dana flops onto the bed, commotion jostling Kate ever so slightly, words on the page jumbling.

"Did I?" With a finger, Kate marks her spot and closes the book, sparing Dana a glance. She's stretched out beside her in a pair of shorts and a tank. Waiting, obviously, for her. Any other time and Kate would feel guilty, but the novel is dangerously good.

"Uh-huh. I've been keeping track, see?" Dana points the screen of her phone towards Kate, where a stop-watch app plays. Except the stop-watch reads seven seconds (not anywhere near an hour), a huge grin growing on her face. Rolling her eyes for good measure, Kate mirrors it with a small smile of her own. 

"One more chapter, I promise." She assures her, returning to where she left off. Dana relents without a word.

Then a moment later, "How many pages are in a chapter?" 

"I don't know. Twenty?" She glances over at Dana, who taps at what she can only assume is a calculator on her phone. Returning to the page has her reading the same paragraph for a third time.

"Okay. How many pages do you think you read in a minute?"

Again, Kate marks her place with a finger, closes her book. She sighs.

“Dana,” she says, “please let me finish.”

Dana places her phone on the end table to her right, and inches closer to Kate on their bed, all innocence. The mischievous edge to her smile doesn't sit well with Kate.

“And,” she draws the word out, fingers tracing up her arm and down again. “what happens if I don't?”

Kate's mind draws a blank, ignoring the way goosebumps follow the trail her fingers leave behind.

“It's too classified for you to know.” She says at last, popping her book back open. A subtle enough hint, surely. She clears her throat, willing her mind to do the same.

“Classified.” Dana repeats, still grinning. Clearly enjoying herself and this little game she's playing. This annoying, infuriatingly effective game.

“Yes.” She meets Dana's eyes and swallows. Can't think of anything else, not with Dana's dark-sea eyes watching her.

“That's the lamest come-back I've ever heard,” Her hand has stilled on Kate's elbow, whisper-light. “but I guess I can let it slide.” She leans forward, kisses her softly. Kate returns it, Dana's lips warm and inviting and a bit more exciting than whatever she was reading. 

Okay, the book can wait.

Dana moves to grab her book, and Kate doesn't protest. With a dull thud it falls to the floor, and she laments her lack of bookmark for just a second.


	8. viii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is written in some sorta post-secondary au where kate and dana OF COURSE attend the same uni so forgive me for being self-indulgent

_The Greasy Spoon_ is more a shrine to the fifties than it is a restaurant. A tacky colour scheme of teal and hot pink assault not only the flooring, but the seating. In a sense, you could say it's authentic, maybe homey. Kate mostly finds it hard on the eyes. (To no surprise, Dana loves it, drinks in all the nods to nostalgia as if she were personally there.)

Elvis plays faintly in the background, though the clatter and casual conversation make the song hard to hear. Kate thinks they might be playing "Blue Christmas", and sometimes if she tilts her head just so, she can hear him drawing the word out. 

The noise has Dana leaning close to her to be heard. Every so often she'll place a hand on Kate's arm, and she misses the contact when it's gone. Dana's been doing most of the talking since they got there, too. 

Kate blames multiple things for this: First, Dana is naturally a charismatic speaker and Kate swears she could read the phone book and make it interesting. Second, she can't bring herself to ask her something that is, in all fairness, rather mundane and not at all out of the ordinary. 

Putting the question off is just making Kate's nervousness worse. She can't tell if her hands are clammy because of her cold drink, or the way Dana looks at her, smiles at her. (Soft, quiet, something else she can't quite place.) 

Staring into her water like it holds all of life's answers is easier than looking at Dana, who's radiant with her hair down, gilded by soft afternoon sunlight.

Kate twirls her straw around, ice cubes clinking against the glass. This should be easy. It's not like she's asking her out on a date. It's only ice-skating. As friends. With other friends. Max and Rachel and Chloe to be exact. 

“So,” she teases the word into one long syllable, flicks her eyes up to Dana who proceeds to slurp her drink obnoxiously. 

“Yes?” Dana asks around the straw, and takes another loud sip at nothing; only ice remains.

“I think your drink is done.” Kate rolls her eyes. Any other time and she'd find it annoying, but laughter bubbles out of her. Silently, Dana agrees and shoves the glass to the side, where it joins their empty plate. (They finished their order of fries fifteen minutes ago, but neither of them made any attempts at actually leaving.)

“And I think your laugh is cute.” She says, so casually, so easily that at first, Kate can only sit there stunned and sputtering like an idiot. She's pretty sure the heat rising to her cheeks could melt the ice in Dana's cup. 

“I—well—I don’t—” She stops herself, throws her eyes to the laminate table top as she shrinks in her seat. “thanks.” It sounds more like a question than a statement.

“You're welcome.” Dana leans forward again, clasping her hands on the table, green nails catching Kate’s attention. A smile plays on her mouth, cat-like, borderline mischievous like she meant to fluster Kate like that. “What were you going to say before I broke you?”

“Nothing important…” Kate mumbles, shrugging. The point seems a little moot, now. “just—there’s this ice-skating thing this Saturday. Max and Chloe—” She grows fed up with her own inability to ask the stupid question. Dana waits, patient as ever, for her to collect herself. 

“Do you want to go? Ice-skating, I mean.” She busies her hands with the straw from her drink, folding it into itself over and over again. The weight of Dana’s gaze never leaves.

“Kate Marsh, are you asking me out on a date?” Her smile grows into a grin. She doesn’t mean it (because how could she?), she’s just joking (there’s no way she’s being serious), but Kate’s heart jumps in her throat all the same. 

“What? I only meant—” For the second time that afternoon, she’s caught off guard by a simple (most likely innocuous) comment. Kate hates it, wishes she could have half of Dana's confidence.

“Of course I’ll go with you,” Dana saves her the trouble of searching for words that won’t come. She covers Kate’s hands with her own, eyes bright with humour. “I love skating.” 

Kate smiles back at her, if only a touch less bright. Matching her megawatt grins is next to impossible.

“Why don’t we head back to campus before we get kicked out?” She suggests, removing her hands from Kate’s. Where her hands used to be grows cold, and Kate withdraws them to her lap.

She agrees, moves to get her wallet from her bag only to be shooed away by Dana. (“My treat, no ifs, ands or buts.”) If she’s being honest, her mind is elsewhere, playing and replaying the moment over in her head. Denying herself the fact she wouldn’t _mind_ dating Dana is pretty hard to do. Finding excuses for it is harder still. (Because if she’s being honest, there is none. Because if she’s being honest, her crush has become increasingly harder to ignore and Dana’s teasing doesn’t help.)

Dana pays for the bill, tips generously, and gathers her things. Kate does the same, shrugging into her coat and following Dana to her car. She doesn't mention Kate's silence during the car ride back, and for this she's thankful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did u kno the comment that was here originally was a million times more self-deprecating but then i was all wait thats uggo and wont really sell your work to others so here have this run-on sentence instead ok bye ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
